Rainn Wilson, David Morse And More Join Serial Killer Thriller The Boy

When we first reported on the serial killer horror The Boy, Elijah Wood’s genre-based production company SpectreVision snatched up the rights, and it sounded like a project that would get made for zero money with actors who we’ve never heard of. I couldn’t have been more wrong about that, as the thriller has landed a group of familiar faces to star. The Office’s Rainn Wilson will go against type for this film, and he’s joined by veteran dramatic actor David Morse (World War Z), We Are What We Are’s Bill Sage, Under the Dome’s Mike Vogel, and Zuleikha Robinson, who you’ll know from Homeland and Lost.

What isn’t clear in the Variety article is whether or not these actors are signing on just for The Boy, or for all three of the proposed films that director Craig Macneill plans to make, for what could be the most progressive horror concept since Scream made everything self-aware (but probably won’t be.)

This first entry will star up-and-coming child actor Jared Breeze, found in SpectreVision’s upcoming horror comedy Cooties, and he’ll play Ted Henley, age 9. This trilogy will track Henley through his morally declining young life, with the second film showing him at 14, and the third at 18, when he unleashes the serial killer side of him. So we’re just seeing the macabre seedling sprouting with The Boy, so I’m guessing some animal mutilation is in store. The script was written by Macneill and Clay McLeod Chapman, whose novel Miss Corpus is where these characters originated.

Morse will play the father, John Henley, who earns his keep as a motel owner in a rural town. Wilson will play a likeable stranger that bewitches Norman Bates the young Henley, and could possibly serve as a mentor down the dark path to crazytown. Vogel and Robinson are a married couple staying at the motel with their son (Aiden Lovekamp), while Sage is strapping on a star as the town’s sheriff. I’d like to know if there’s a mother role yet to be cast, or if the mother is gone from the family equation - because you just know it’ll be a big part of Henley’s mental state.

Also starring in Cooties, Wilson recently finished filming the artificially intelligent sci-fi thriller Uncanny with director Matthew Leutwyler, while Morse, who will be missed on HBO’s Treme, will soon be seen in Alexandre Aja’s Horns, assuming it ever comes out. Sage has a crapload of movies coming out in the next year, including Amy Berg’s crime thriller Every Secret Thing with Elizabeth Banks and Dakota Fanning. Robinson will soon star with Britt Robertson in Allison Burnett’s Undiscovered Gyrl, and tune into the ABC movie In My Dreams, airing this April, to see Vogel in his next project.

This is a great squad, and they’ll be going to work soon, as principal photography started on February 17th. The video below is a clip from Macneill’s short film Henley, which inspired the entire project.